1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an egg breaking mechanism which can be advantageously incorporated in an automatic egg breaking system for successively breaking eggs and taking out their contents.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As is well known, eggs have found wide use. For example, the egg yolk may be used as a material for making mayonnaise or other food products. The egg albumen may be used for making pharmaceutical products or as a binder for protein products. Due to such wide use of the egg, it is absolutely necessary in industry to use an automatic egg breaking system for breaking eggs and taking out their contents at high speed.
An automatic egg breaking system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,480,056 for example. The egg breaking system of this U.S. patent comprises a circulating transfer mechanism which carries a plurality of egg breaking mechanisms at a constant pitch. Each of the egg breaking mechanisms is made to receive an egg from an egg supply unit and break the egg while the egg breaking mechanism moves along the transfer path.
Each of the egg breaking mechanisms disclosed in the above U.S. patent comprises an egg receiver for receiving an egg thereon, an egg presser arranged above the egg receiver for pressing the egg against the egg receiver, a knife assembly for making a cut in the egg shell, and a cup assembly arranged below the egg receiver for receiving the discharged content of the egg. The egg receiver includes a pair of receiver members movable toward and away from each other. The knife assembly includes a pair of knife members pivotally connected to the respective receiver members. The cup assembly is made to separate the egg content into a yolk portion and an albumen portion.
In the prior art egg breaking mechanism, each of the receiver members has a downwardly open channel-form bracket, whereas each of the knife member has an upwardly open channel-form bracket. The respective brackets are joined to define a rectangular space, and connected together by a transverse pivot pin to establish pivotal connection between each receiver member and the corresponding knife member.
According to the prior art, it is difficult to make access, for cleaning purposes, to the rectangular space which is defined by the respective channel-form brackets and transversed by the pivot pin. Thus, the prior art egg breaking mechanism has been found to have a hygienic problem particularly in view of the fact that egg residues are suitable for bacterial breeding.